


AN ADDRESS 



rn 



The University of Illinois 



PRESIDENT ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.D. 

BEFORE 

THE ASSOCIATION OF OFFICERS OF 
STATE INSTITUTIONS 

A.T THE 

Executive Mansion, Springfield, Illinois 
APRIL 8, 1903 



IN EXCHANGE, 

II). Univ. 

ftur * MM 



A1ST ADDRESS 



The University of Illinois 



PRESIDENT ANDREW S. DRAPERi LL.D. 



THE ASSOCIATION OF OFFICERS OF 
STATE INSTITUTIONS 



Executive Mansion, Springfield, Illinois 



APRIL 8, 1903 



.] 7 



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STUDENTS 

ATTENDANCE 

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STATE-UNIVER5ITIE5 

or THE 

CENTRAL-WEST 
1895-1903 








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1. 


Men's Gymnasium 


2. 


Armory 


3. 


Wood Shops 


4. 


Metal Shops 


5. 


Electrical Laboratory 


6. 


Reservoir 


7. 


Heating Plant 


8. 


Pumping Plant 


9. 


Testing Laboratory 


10. 


Engineering Building 


11. 


Greenhouse 


12. 


President's House 


13. 


Library Building 


14. 


University Hall 


15. 


Natural History Building 


16. 


Law Building 


17. 


Chemical Laboratory 


18. 


Agricultural Group 


19. 


Agricultural Greenhouse 


20. 


Observatory 


21. 


Warehouse 


22. 


Veterinary Building 


23. 


Insectary. 




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21'?— t 



HORTTCULTURAU 

EXPERIMENT \ 

GROUNDS 



AGRtCULTURAI. T 

• EXPERIMENT GROUNDS 



PLAN OF CAMPUS. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 



The people of Illinois established the University upon 
which they bestowed the name of their State. They did 
not merely empower a corporation to set up a University ; 
they set up one for themselves ; they did it to promote pur- 
poses of their own ; they did it through their General As- 
sembly, which upon matters educational exercises sover- 
eign power. 

They were moved to do this at the time they did be- 
cause of the National Land-Grant Act of 1862. This Act 
had been an issue between the aggressiveness of the west 
and the conservatism of the east for years. It had been 
once passed by Congress to be vetoed by an eastern Presi- 
dent. Their own Lincoln had favored it ; it was fitting 
that his hand should give it life. It was an epoch making 
statute in world education. It grew out of the natural 
trend of a democratic society unparalleled in the freedom 
of its thought and the forcefulness of its doing. The men 
and women of the Upper Mississippi Yalley of forty years 
ago had descended from New England and New York and 
Pennsylvania stock, and well knew the influence of the 
advanced schools, but they had been limbered up by west- 
ern life, and dared to believe that the operations of the 
colleges ought to guide the thinking of freemen towards the 
great ends for which democracies are set up, and that the 
schools should have something to do with the hand-work 
as well as with the sophistry and the religion of a people. 

There was no educational anarchism, only freedom, 
about this. They tore down nothing, but they would not 
force all who wanted the advantages of the higher schools 
to learn languages which were dead for the mere sake of 
culture, and they would not assume that the power to think 

5 



6 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 

and the right to feel stopped with the theological masters 
of an age when modern society had not got upon its 
feet. Other people might teach what they liked; they 
would even provide the old education for their own, for 
they knew its worth ; but they were bound to break out 
new roads and they understood perfectly well that they 
were forcing new and important policies in education. 
They were not very clear about how it was to be done, but 
in some way they would have advanced schools of their 
own, answerable to no man and dependent upon no man, 
which should recognize new industrial conditions and 
train their young to the developing ideals of their new- 
found democratic life. Their social structure was in no 
sense unbalanced ; it was more evenly balanced than any 
which had gone before it, for it recognized the rights of 
all men ; and it deliberately intended to bear down stan- 
dards of thought, to set aside false valuations of human 
accomplishments, and to supercede dogmatic methods of 
teaching which had grown out of one form or another of 
human bondage, and had sprung from conditions which 
had passed, or were fast passing away. 

Illinois should have moved before she did. There 
were reasons for delay not necessary to discuss now. Her 
course was accelerated by the time limitation in the Con- 
gressional statute. But she would have moved very soon 
in any event. All the other states associated with her in 
the old North-West Territory, all the others approaching 
her standing in the upper water-shed of the Mississippi, 
had founded state universities upon the classical lines be- 
fore she did much of anything. She did as they had done, 
and also incorporated into her plan the new purposes of 
her democratic people, and the machinery of the Federal 
Act. Possibly it was to her advantage that she waited, 
for she had the benefit of the experiences of others, and 
she did not meet the danger of scattering her energies and 
of duplicating her institutions. The movement in this 
State was of course inevitable, and the time and the plan 
of it were fortunate. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 7 

THE GROWTH OF THE UNIVERSITY 

The growth and the strength of it have surprised all 
who are not versed in the history of intellectual awaken- 
ings. As the claim for one new department after another 
has been met, students have gathered in greater and yet 
greater numbers : the claim for larger libraries and later 
appliances, with which to help on the search for the more 
hidden truth has become more and more insistent : and the 
demand for additional departments which will promote 
every moral, culturing, philosophical, scientific, commer- 
cial and industrial interest in the State has become more 
and more imperative. And as the Legislature has re- 
sponded to the people with a wise and generous hand the 
University has gone forward to splendid proportions and 
looks out upon the future with confidence in possibilities 
which are boundless. 

It occupies more than 20 substantial buildings : its 
faculties number more than 300 persons from all the lead- 
ing universities of the world : the registration of students 
ten years ago was 755, the registration this year is 3288 ; 
they come from every county in Illinois, and from forty 
other states and eleven foreign countries. In size Illinois 
has come to be the eighth University in the United States. 

THE MAKING OF MEN AND WOMEN 

It is no respecter of persons. It is for no class of the 
people ; it does not believe in classifying the people. Its 
high mission is to bind men together in a democracy of 
learning, and to extend the noblest fraternity in all the 
wide world. It wants the favor and the patronage of the 
thrifty, but no one who is earnest, and has the preparation 
which the high schools can give, will ever find its doors 
slammed in his face because he is poor. It stands on the 
plane of the common brotherhood, and its doings are be- 
yond the control of bigotry or of partisanship, of corporate 
power, of social cast, or of wealth. It holds that woman 
has the inherent right to the same educational liberty and 
the same intellectual opportunity as man. Its face is to. 



8 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 

the sunlight. It is not backing its way into the future 
with sorrowing eyes upon idols in the remote and shadowy 
past. It cherishes culture, but it knows that any culture 
worth having must come through work. It encourages 
philosophy, but a philosophy which keeps it feet upon the 
earth, which sees through the eye of courage and uplifts 
the common life. It stands not only for teaching, but for 
research ; not wandering, pointless pottering, but the hard 
study of hidden truth which may enlarge one's knowledge 
of himself and of all nature, which may make life happier 
and society more secure, which may quicken commerce 
and carry new fascination into the agricultural and me- 
chanical industries. It nourishes the life of the spirit, but 
it neither submits nor objects to any creed; it is not for 
free thinking which has no havens or anchorages ; it is for 
freedom in a faith based upon scientific facts and logical 
thinking, and it encourages worship in any form. It 
stands for all men and for equality of opportunity ; its 
sympathies are as high as heaven, and as broad as the 
boundless universe of matter and of life ; it understands 
that it is the instrument of democratic society to strength, 
en its own foundations by making men and women sane and 
true and tolerant and useful in the home and in the State, 
and it understands also that it is not its business to over- 
ride or discourage, but to help on every other instrumental- 
ity, public or private, which makes for the same great ends. 

THE UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS 

Now let us go through the buildings of this University 
and see just what is being done. The journey is a long 
one and you must be patient. We are to look into rooms 
where more than six hundred different courses of work are 
being carried on. If one man was to undertake to do all 
this work, and should be a good enough student to pass 
out of each course without " flunking " it would take him 
seventy years to do it. It needs much time just to look 
into the rooms where this work is done, and the journey 
cannot be made as interesting by word as by sight. Yet 



THE r^TVERSITY OF rLLrXOIS 9 

if vou will help me I think I can convey to you a general 
knowledge of University affairs which you will be glad to 
have. TTe will take the buildings, generally speaking, in 
the order of their erection, and you will in that way get 
something of an idea of the growth through which the 
University has passed. 



THE OLD BniD^'C-. 



The first is the " Old Building," or University Hall. 
It was erected in 1S72 by a people who probably thought 
that it would meet all the needs of the wi University " for 
all time. It is not very attractive, architecturally, but it 
is very roomy, and exceedingly useful. One department 
after another has grown large and gone out of this building 
until it has come to be the spacious home of the College of 
Literature and Arts. Here are the departments of ancient 
and modern languages and their literatures, rhetoric and 
oratory. Associated with these are the departments of 
history, philosophy, the science of government, economics, 
education, including psychology and the scientific study of 
the public school system. Here one may secure an all- 
around liberal education and may specialize in any one 
subject to his heart's content. Closely associated with 
the department of economics is the work preparatory to a 
business career. — finance and accounts, banking, insur- 
ance, manufacturing, transportation, trade, business ad- 
ministration, etc.. which was specially provided by the 
last legislature. In this building, also, in close connection 
with the College of Literature, is the School of Art and 
Design, and the School of Music. The School of Art offers 
many courses in drawing, painting, modeling and design, 
and the School of Music provides liberal facilities in 
musical theory and history, as well as for the study of an 
instrument or the cultivation of the voice. There are 
half a dozen excellent musical organizations, and recitals 
and concerts are frequent. For three years we have had 
the support of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at our 
annual Musical Festival in Mav. In this building: we 



10 THE UNIVERSITY OE ILLINOIS 

could spend a pleasant hour in the Zoological Museum 
which is the work of students of earlier days and, while as 
creditable as it was fascinating to them, illustrates very- 
well how marked the advance in the methods of teaching 
the biological sciences has been. On the other side of the 
hall we stop a moment at the door of the old Chapel which 
has grown so small as to largely go out of use. It will seat 
700, while we need accommodations for 3,000. 

THE LAW BUILDING. 

The only other building on the campus which is fif- 
teen years old was built in 1877 for a Chemical laboratory, 
and remodeled in 1902 for the College of Law. This Col- 
lege believes in studying the science of law just as one 
studies any other science, and exacts the entire time of stu- 
dents and teachers. The college is young, being opened 
in 1897. The building has been well made over, and its 
pleasant offices, ample class rooms, well lighted library, 
and traditional court room make a fine home for a College 
which promises to be very potential in the affairs of the 
University and the State. 



THE ARMORY. 



The next structure erected is the Armory at the north 
end of Burr ill avenue. Burr ill avenue, by the way, runs 
north and south nearly through the three hundred acres 
in the campus, has a stately row of beautiful elm trees on 
either side and takes its name from that of the professor 
who has been setting out trees on the University grounds 
from the very beginning. It is said 15,000 trees have been 
so placed. The drill floor at the Armory is 100x150 feet, 
and the roof, designed by our professor of architecture, is 
said to be the largest trussed roof in the State. Here 
military drill is required of all freshmen and sophomore 
male students twice each week through the year. The 
military organization consists of a Band of forty men, a 
battery of artillery of about eighty fmen, with two six 
pounder field guns, and a regiment of infantry of six hun- 
dred men, equipped with the regulation cadet musket. 



THE UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS 11 

The uniform is gray, officers blue. The field and line offi- 
cers are chosen from the Graduate School and the two 
upper classes, and the non-commissioned officers from the 
two lower classes. The organization is complete, and the 
discipline exact. It is the claim of the University that 
its military organization is in appearance, discipline, and 
morale not equaled in the State. It has attracted first 
attention in the last two inaugural parades at Springfield. 
The department is in charge of an officer of the Regular 
Army detailed by the War Department, the present de- 
tail being a gallant veteran of the Civil War and of many 
Indian campaigns who has been in the service more than 
forty years. 



NATURAL HISTORY BUILDING. 



The building with steep gables, built of red pressed 
brick and Bedford stone, is that of the College of Science 
and is called, with doubtful advisability, the Natural His- 
tory Building. Here are the departments of botany, 
zoology, entomology, geology, physiology, and experi- 
mental psychology. Here, too, are the quarters of the 
State Entomologist, and the State Laboratory of Natural 
History. One interested in scientific research will gravi- 
tate towards this building. If cats and dogs are indis- 
posed to contribute themselves to science they will go a 
long way around it. In one of these rooms there are 
enough microbes bottled up in test tubes to set the whole 
State aflame with malignant diseases, and in another 
there are the appliances to show that the heart of the em- 
bryonic chicken in the egg begins to beat in less than 
two days after the hen begins to set. Every scientific 
process is followed in these departments with the patience 
and enthusiasm which prove how very difficult and how 
very eager is the quest for new scientific truth. When it 
is found all the world knows it. 



THE ENGINEERING BUILDING. 



This fine building of buff brick and stone, over the 
way, has no superior in the country for engineering educa- 



12 THE UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS 

tion. In it is carried on the class work of the great de- 
partments of civil engineering, mechanical engineering, 
including railway engineering, electrical engineering, and 
municipal and sanitary engineering. The department of 
architecture and architectural engineering occupies the top 
floor. It has been in charge of Professor Ricker for nearly 
thirty years, and his scholarly industry has resulted in a 
collection of architectural plates and models of unequaled 
value. The department of physics is here also, but it sorely 
needs a building of its own, and the engineering depart- 
ments need the room it occupies. The department of pho- 
tography has its quarters here as well. The engineering 
shops and laboratories are housed in a row of six new 
brick structures north of the Engineering Building. We 
will walk through them, just glancing here and there, lest 
you tire out and leave us before we are half way through. 

TESTING LABORATORY. 

The first is the Laboratory of Applied Mechanics, or 
Testing Laboratory. Here all manner of building ma- 
terials, iron, stone, brick, cement, are tested for strength 
and durability. This is the Hydraulic Laboratory, and 
this next one is the Water Station. The University pumps 
all the water it uses from deep wells, and requires some- 
thing like 140,000 gallons each day. 

HEAT, LIGHT AND POWER. 

We will go out of this back door and into the back 
door of the boiler room of the heat, light and power plant. 
Here we have 1,100 horse power in boilers, which furnish 
heat and light and power to all University buildings. All 
pipes and wires are carried through mason-work, under- 
ground tunnels which are six feet, six inches in the up- 
right diameter, and have already attained a length of 
3,000 feet, more than half a mile. The whole system was 
laid out and constructed by Professor Breckenridge. 

STEAM LABORATORY. 

This highly attractive building in front shelters the 
electrical and steam laboratories. The architectural work 



THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 13 

for this group was done by two of our professors, Messrs. 
Temple and McLean. The steam laboratory is full of 
steam engines of every character and design. Here is 
one of our own make, and is especially interesting, for it 
is the first steam engine ever made in an educational in- 
stitution. Several of these were made by students in 
regular work. Here is an air compressor, and Professor 
Breckenridge has led a pipe to the open air at several 
points so the boys can hitch on their bicycles and have the 
tire blown up without the hard labor which he would have 
them keep for other things. These engines and dynamos 
within the immaculate brass rail supply the lights on the 
campus and in all the buildings. 



ELECTRICAL LABORATORY. 



METAL SHOPS. 



Out here, in the front, upstairs and down, are the 
electrical laboratories, and one who is up in such things 
may study dynamos, and motors, and converters, and 
transformers, and storage batteries, and switch-boards to 
his heart's content. Some years ago before our equip- 
ment approached its present stage a bright, recent grad- 
uate of one of the two or three foremost eastern technical 
schools came to me with a letter from the Governor of the 
State asking me to afford him the facilities for doing an 
intricate piece of electrical work. I helped him, but felt 
the necessity of apologizing for our equipment as com- 
pared with what he had been accustomed to. In a week 
he had his work done and came in to thank me. As I 
again expressed fear that we might not have such equip- 
ment as he had worked with he said, " Oh, you have no 
apologies to make ; you have enough sight better equip- 
ment than they have." 



This long building over here contains the metal shops. 
This is the smith shop. This is the foundry ; if we could 
happen in here on a Friday morning we should see the 
boys "pour off." This is the machine shop, where we 
shall find some as beautiful pieces of mechanism as you 



WOOD SHOPS. 



14 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 

ever saw. Here among others is a costly gear-cutting 
machine recently given us as a memorial to Edward L. 
Adams, a bright young graduate, whose lamentable death 
resulted from fidelity to his employers and zeal for his 
profession. This great fly wheel was cast out in the 
foundry ; it is the largest ever attempted by students, and 
is part of a steam engine which the boys are getting ready 
for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis next 
year. This engine, with their Illinois Central dynamom- 
eter car, will be likely to draw its full share of attention 
to our department of me chanical engineering. 

This is the Wood Shop. It is new and a model for 
others to profit by. The neatness and order of the place 
attract one, and many a young man finds lifelong pleasure 
and profit in the work which he is here required to do. 

You understand that in these shops we are not merely 
training young men to be blacksmiths and carpenters, as 
desirable as such training is. Where that is done they 
must spend a much longer time in the shop than is prac- 
ticable here. We are training them for engineers. We 
are teaching them respect for the mechanic, and seeing 
that they know something of the difficulties in his way. 
We are putting into them some knowledge of the funda- 
mental processes which are at the foundation of success- 
ful engineering. And there is a plan about it all. They 
study theories, and then they carry them out. They go 
into the designing and drafting room ; and then they make 
the patterns ; and then they mould and cast the parts in 
iron ; and then they finish and burnish them ; then they 
mount them and make up the finished machine ; finally 
they turn on the power and see whether their theories have 
been correct and their work exact. No one boy does all 
this, but all have a part in it. The work is not pointless. 
There is interest from beginning to end, and great satis- 
faction in the climax. While their hands have been grow- 
ing deft, their heads have been growing clear and strong, 
and their hearts have been growing tolerant and kindly. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 15 



LIBRARY BCTLDrKG. 



We shall now go into the finest building on the 
grounds, the Library Building. The appropriation for it 
was saved by an all night ride. It was built in 1897 of 
Minnesota sandstone, and is wholly fire proof. Its noble 
tower and red tiled roofs produce a superior architectural 
effect. This tower is waiting for a chime of bells which 
some generous hand will sometime give us. An American 
artist, (Mr. Xewton A. Wells), studying in Paris, came 
all the way to place the mural paintings in the lunettes of 
the delivery room and oversee the decorations. He has 
since become a member of our art and architectural facul- 
ties. We were bound to have a little good art work to 
stimulate the good taste of generations of students, and 
we succeeded. The paintings represent Literature, Agri- 
culture, Science and Engineering, the four colleges of the 
University at the time they were executed. The scheme 
of decoration is purely Byzantine, and it is said that this 
is the only building in the country of which this is true. 
The delivery room is copied from the throne room in the 
palace of King Ludwig in Bavaria. The reading rooms 
are spacious, and amply lighted from both sides. Silence 
is exacted here, and a conversation room is provided as a 
a city of refuge for the oppressed. The stack rooms have 
capacity for 150,000 volumes. The administration offices 
are upstairs, but will some day claim a building of their 
own. We are accustomed to say that this beautiful Li- 
brary building is the best example of the finished work of 
the University, for its existence is due to graduates of the 
L^niversity. Senator Henry M. Dunlap, of the class of 1875, 
was the main spoke in the wheel that turned out the appro- 
priation, as he has been in many other similar wheels. Pro- 
fessors Kicker and White, of the department of architecture, 
both graduates of the University, were the architects and 
Warren R. Roberts, of the class of 1888, was the president 
of the construction company which erected the building. 

The art collections in the basement are not so well 
provided for as they deserve. These plaster casts of the 



16 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 

masterpieces in sculpture, and this rich collection of old 
steel engravings, unsurpassed in the number of historic 
portraits, were procured by the first President of the Uni- 
versity through the generosity of friends in the early days 
of the institution. President Gregory went to Europe to 
make his selections, and gave liberally of his own money 
as well as of his cultivated artistic sense to give these col- 
lections to the institution into which he was putting his 
own life. They must in time be installed in an environ- 
ment of greater dignity and effectiveness, in a building 
which will stand for the art interests of the State. 



LIBRARY SCHOOL. 



We must not leave this building without mentioning 
the State Library School, which has rooms here, which is 
preparing librarians for public service. It has a two 
years' course, and requires three years of college work in 
preparation for it. Many of its students are graduates of 
this and other universities. The course is severe and we 
have more students than we know how to take care of. 
The school has but one or two substantial rivals in the 
country. It is doing a very great work for the public, 
and incidentally it has rendered a marked service to the 
Library interests and has exerted a very uplifting influ- 
ence upon the womanly interests of this University. The 
school, with the Library, requires the exclusive use of this 
building, and it is to be hoped that the erection of a sep- 
arate administration building will in time give the build- 
ing over to it. 



SOUTH CAMPUS. 



We must now go out to the south campus. As stu- 
dents have multiplied in recent years they flock out to 
these beautiful lawns, and the artificial forest, in the af- 
ternoons, at this time of the year for recreation. All the 
open air sports flourish. Even the " 'Yarsity teams" 
practice here for a time in order to gratify the ambition 
of the gardeners and give the lawns on " Illinois Field " 
a better chance for life. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 17 



CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 



That building on the corner over there, just over the 
border of the campus, is the property of the University- 
Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations. 
It is a fine property, and they own another fine piece of 
real estate on the other side of the grounds. The Asso- 
ciations have seven or eight hundred student members, 
and are the most efficient organizations of their kind in 
the West. They assist new students in finding homes 
and getting started, and are at all times forceful in pro- 
moting religious activity in the University community. 



ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY. 



That building, with the dome, on the high ground, is 
the Astronomical Observatory. The appropriation for 
that came out of a "Legislative mix-up," and few knew 
what had happened until the smoke of battle had cleared 
away. The building is equipped with a fine twelve-inch 
equatorial telescope and accessories, and is capable of ex- 
cellent work in the way of research as well as of instruction. 
It is not of much use to go in there until night has come. 



VACCINE LABORATORY. 






The little building among the trees is the Vaccine Lab- 
oratory, where the professor of Veterinary Science oper- 
ates for vaccine virus, which is supplied to the State insti- 
tutions and the medical profession. 



AGRICULTURAL BUILDINGS. 



Now we have come to the buildings of the College of 
Agriculture. There are five in the group, erected in 1899- 
1900. If you walk around the outside of these buildings 
you will have traveled a quarter of a mile. The inside 
space is enormous. We believe we are solving here the 
difficult problem of scientific agricultural education. The 
work can only be indicated in the briefest manner. Here 
they are beginning to make a general survey of the differ- 
ent soils of the State. They are analyzing soils chemically 
in order to see what crops may be raised to best advantage, 
and what sort of treatment the soil should have. They 



18 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 

treat of drainage and irrigation and fertilizers and the ro- 
tation of crops and of farm machinery, etc. They study 
trees, particularly fruit bearing trees, and pay no little 
attention to ornamental trees, and to landscape garden- 
ing and architecture. Vegetables and flowers find places 
in their courses. The department of animal husbandry is 
teaching the propagation, care, treatment and use of dom- 
estic animals. The department of dairy husbandry is 
teaching, by theory and demonstration, the preparation of 
all classes of dairy products. If you will look out of that 
south window you will see the barns with good specimens 
of Morgan horses, a great family which the University is 
striving to recover, and you may see hundreds of dairy and 
beef cattle, including the Shorthorn, Jersey, Ayreshire, 
Guernsey andHolstein families, as choice as any in the coun- 
try. Specimens are led into the stock judging room down 
stairs where they may be studied deliberately and with 
comfort. 



E XPERIMENT ATION. 



Out of this window, too, we may see parts of the South 
Farm of four hundred acres of garden lands which the Uni- 
versity owns and gives over to the great work of agricul- 
tural experimentation. The United States Agricultural 
Experiment Station is housed here. In the last two years 
Illinois has put a hundred thousand dollars into the work 
of this station. And with her agricultural interests well 
she may. It has been proved here that you can change 
the chemical constituents of corn by selection. Who can 
estimate the value of that to a State with a corn crop of 
320,000,000 bushels, the largest by far in the country ? 



HOUSEHOLD SCIENCE. 



Here is the department of household science. It is 
not a cooking school, but a place where the house, — its 
design and decoration and equipment and safety and 
healthfulness and conveniences, the food, — its production, 
analysis, adaptation, preparation, where everything re- 
lated to home making and family life is scientifically 
studied. This is the only University in the country, so 









THE I3IYERSITY OF ILLINOIS 19 

far as I know, where this all important subject is given 
recognized position in college work, and where work in it 
may count towards a degree. 

We cannot tarry longer in these buildings, but before 
we go it ought to be said that a very large share of the 
credit for this great agricultural development is due to 
Dean Eugene Davenport, and that it now looks as though 
the advance of the next two years will equal, if not sur- 
pass, that of the last two. 

CHEMICAL LABORATORY. 

This fine, large building, hardly finished, is the Chemi- 
cal Laboratory. It is in the form of the letter £. and is 
230 feet along the front, and 116 feet along the wings. 
The details of this structure came from the very full ex- 
perience of this University and from chemical laboratories 
in all parts of the world. In ample provision for work in 
both pure and economic chemistry, as well as in range and 
efficiency of work, we need not fear comparison with any. 
It is said that we have graduated more students in ad- 
vanced chemistry than any other institution in the country 
save one. I am not competent to tell you about the details 
of this work. Here are lecture rooms and laboratories. 
class rooms and seminary rooms and research rooms and 
balance rooms and supply rooms, and stills and retorts and 
bottles and odors, without limit. I suppose the apparatus 
needs strengthening : it always does. If that should cease 
to be true we would all be ripe for translation. In that 
room there they have been carrying on a lot of nutrition 
experiments in cooperation with the United States Gov- 
ernment. I heard them say the other day that they had 
proved that there was just as much nutriment in the cheap 
cuts of meat as in the more costly : that the the only dif- 
ference is in toothsomeness and price. There is consola- 
tion for some of us in that. In this room here they have, 
in the last six or eight years, analyzed fifteen thousand 
specimens of drinking water in order to determine whether 
thev contain the serais of disease. These have come from 



GYMNASIUM. 



20 THE UNIVERSITY OE ILLINOIS 

the people in all parts of the State and no charge has been 
made for it. 



We must now go to the north side of the grounds to 
see the new Men's Gymnasium. On the way you will 
notice the President's house, erected in 1896, where I am 
sure you will be very welcome, and we will just walk 
through the green houses. Here plants and flowers are 
propogated for use about the grounds and buildings and 
in study. 

This gymnasium is, like the armory adjacent, 
100x150 feet on the ground. On its first floor are the 
oflices of the Director, the examination room, dressing 
rooms for the 'Varsity and visiting teams, the Faculty 
dressing room, and the locker room, with provision for 
twelve hundred metal lockers, and a swimming pool 26x 
75 feet, and 8 feet deep. 

All freshman students undergo physical examina- 
tion, and prescribed physical exercise is required through 
the first year. Every care is taken to correct physical 
defects, or unfortunate tendencies, and to train the body 
so it may carry the severe work of the University. We 
strive to develop well rounded men and women with 
powers harmoniously developed, and we believe in work 
and sport rationally balanced. 

Here is the trophy room for the care of footballs and 
baseballs and bats and all manner of appliances used in in- 
tercollegiate contests which have now and again stirred the 
University crowd to the very depths. That beautiful 
sterling silver loving cup was presented by the business 
men of Champaign to the 'Varsity baseball team when 
they came home from the east last year after winning five 
games out of six they played. They lost to Harvard by a 
score of two runs to one on a bit of hard luck, and by rea- 
son of a split finger, but they had the Princeton, Yale, 
West Point, Pennsylvania, and Michigan scalps, — rather 
aristocratic ones surely, at their belt when they came 
back to the tall timber. And all the members of the team 






THE UNIVERSITY OE ILLINOIS 21 

were matriculated students without conditions in their 
studies, the average standing of all the men being above 
89. Practically all of them graduated last year, or will 
this. Yet when I was on my vacation in the east last 
summer the college boys would timidly lead up to the 
baseball question, and with a little encouragement they 
would brace up and ask whether " the men in that base- 
ball team were truly students of the University? " What 
could possibly lead them to think of such a thing? 

The gymnasium floor upstairs is the full size of the 
building, and the running track suspended above it covers 
a mile in thirteen laps. From these north windows we 
get a fine view of "Illinois Field. " It covers about 12 
acres. The elliptical cinder track covers one-third of a 
mile, and the straight-away is one-eighth of a mile. It 
makes an excellent place for the "diamond" and the 
" gridiron" and for military reviews. Here many a con- 
test develops genuine skill and heroism and makes Illi- 
nois blood tingle to the very tips of the fingers. 



COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, ETC. 

We have now finished our tour of buildings and 
grounds, so far as they are associated with the seat of the 
University, but I must say a word of the important de- 
partments in Chicago. In 1896 the Old Chicago College 
of Pharmacy, founded in 1859, and occupying the building 
at 465 State street, was absorbed by the University. In 
1897 the College of Physicians and Surgeons became the 
College of Medicine of the University, and in 1901 a 
School of Dentistry was organized in connection with that 
College. The Schools of Medicine and Dentistry occupy 
most commodious buildings opposite the Cook County 
Hospital, and are of first prominence in the city. Our 
departments in Chicago are wholly self-supporting, and 
have more than a thousand students. 

YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN 

We have now seen the University plant, but grounds 
and mason work are not the objects of first interest here. 



22 THE UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS 

Young men and women have the first place in human in- 
terest, and the work which our students are doing has a 
fascination beyond everything else we can show you. 

As you have seen, the work extends into every field 
of intellectual and industrial activity, with the single ex- 
ception of theology. We believe in general culture, and 
work for it unremittingly. We believe that the high and 
ultimate standing of this people is conditioned upon 
broader and more exact training for their professional life. 
We know that the wealth of Illinois is in her soil, and 
that her strength lies in its intelligent development. 
Above all else we know that the prosperity and influence 
of the State and the happiness of her people must turn 
upon the training, the industry, and the outlook of her 
young men and women. We are not unmindful of the 
solemn responsibility of our trust, and we are striving to 
guide and direct the young men and women of Illinois, in 
whatever line of work they may choose, so that they may 
not only become sure-footed and safe citizens with a prop- 
er appreciation of the obligations of public service, but 
also that they may honor industry of every kind, and be 
filled with the purpose and the power to produce some- 
thing which will quicken the moral strength and enlarge 
the honest wealth of all. 

We would not only train our students, and teach them 
what the world already knows, but we would enlarge the sum 
of the world's knowledge. The State has as yet hardly en- 
abled us to go beyond the teaching. Two years ago, for 
the first time, it gave the Agricultural Experiment Sta- 
tion a hundred thousand dollars to find new scientific 
facts. That is a short time in which to get much result 
from experimentation, but it is wholly within bounds to 
say that the results already gained are worth much more 
to the economic wealth of Illinois than all the moneys she 
has put into the University in the thirty-five years of 
its history. Why should not the State enable her engi- 
neering as well as he agricultural interests to experiment? 
If she will I am sure the results will be no less gratifying. 



THE UNIVERSITY OE ILLINOIS 23 

STUDENT LIEE 

Student life at the University is free, democratic and 
healthful. We do not want students who are not mature 
enough to go away from home and be self-respecting and 
gain strength through independence. We do not want 
students Avho have not made the most of the local schools 
and are not prepared for college work. Our entrance re- 
quirements are high, — as high as those of any university 
in the Middle-West, and they are going still higher. We 
are not looking for students : we are seeking to be useful, 
and usefulness requires that students who can do and are 
anxious to do college work shall not be hindered by those 
who are not prepared, or who are without fiber and pur- 
pose. 

As a rule, our students are from comfortable though 
modest homes, have neither time nor money to waste, 
and are here with a serious purpose. A few get in by 
mistake, theirs or ours ; no one knows why they came, but 
they soon find their level through University sentiment 
and the semester examinations, and ere long they "quitu- 
ate " under some sort of a guise which will cover a retreat. 

The work is severe, requiring good health and full 
time. The ambition to do it is so strong, the humiliation 
of failure is so great that there is more occasion to caution 
against overwork and to look out for health and the eyes 
than there is to incite to greater effort. 

Congenial spirits among the students set up scores of or- 
ganizations of their own for fraternal, literary, scientific, 
musical, religious, political or athletic purposes. There 
are nearly a score of Greek Letter fraternities, m ost of 
them living in rented houses. Several have recently pur- 
chased sites and will erect houses of their own a t an early 
day. In a very few years all will own their own houses. 

Student publications are numerous. The Illin i is the 
daily newspaper. The Illio is the Junior class annual. 
The Illinois is the admirable representative of the English 
Club. The Illinois Agriculturist stands for the College of 
Agriculture, and the Plexus for the College of Medi- 
cine, etc. 



24 THE UNTVEKSITY OF ILLINOIS 

Unive rsity students are not all real or simulated saints. 
They are not all just ready for translation. We do not put 
a premium on razor faces. But the moral sense of the 
whole body is certainly as free and reliable, it is surely 
as healthful and expressive as in smaller institutions, 
where more is done to regulate conduct and not so much 
to enco urage healthful self activity. There is often moral 
safety in numbers, because there is more right than wrong 
in people, anyway, and in an educated crowd the predomi- 
nance of right is decisive, and it is to be relied upon. We 
proceed upon the theory that men and women who go to 
college know what is right and may be expected to do it. 
We do not make rules to defy breakage, and we do no spy- 
ing to stir resentment. We do not lecture the crowd be- 
cause one deserves it. We admonish the one, offer him 
every help we can, and when he cannot do our work, or 
if he has developed any habits which unfit him for safe 
association with others, we send him home. We would 
send one home for intoxication, for visiting a saloon, for 
licentiousness, or for gambling, or betting, or for any other 
moral wrong which would extend if not met decisively. 
We seek companionship between faculty and students, and 
between students of every social station and grade of work, 
and the result is a mutuality of helpfulness which every 
one, from first to last, in the institution stands in need of 
if he is to make the most of himself, and if the greatest 
things are to be accomplished. 

It is sometimes said that in the smaller institutions 
the students come more in contact with good teachers and 
more under the influence of strong men than in the larger 
ones. Very likely the smaller institutions have certain 
advantages in certain ways, and for certain men. We 
cannot enter upon the task of measuring men in institu- 
tions of different dimensions, but it is fair to say that one 
will look long and hard for a student in a leading univer- 
sity who has lacked sufficient contact with a teacher who 
is entirely able to teach him, and the influence of an edu- 
cated throng, and of the infinite variety of work, upon each 



THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 25 

individual, will make reasonable amends for any lack of 
strong men who have been diverted from the larger insti- 
tutions to the smaller ones. 

RELATIONS WITH OTHER INSTITUTIONS 

One who disparages any genuine educational instru- 
mentality only discredits himself and deals his own insti- 
tution a vital blow. In education, the more one gives to 
another the richer he becomes. Meanness defeats itself. 
We have many educational instrumentalities in this coun- 
try. They are all to be encouraged, for they all form part 
of the public educational system. Private educational 
enterprise is to be commended. A State has a right to 
found a university. The very end of a democratic state is 
education. The people have a right to set up a uni- 
versity of their own which shall stimulate and guide their 
own thinking and bring the benefits of higher learning to 
all of their industrial and commercial affairs. But that 
university has no right to ask any special favors from the 
common power which may discourage personal enterprise 
or discredit private undertakings unless imperative to the 
general good and essential to the general ends for which it 
is maintained. All are bound to work together in mutual 
respect and fraternal regard, and so long as all are guided 
by reasonable intelligence and actuated by sound motives 
there will be no difficulty about it. 

LOOKING FORWARD 

The University of Illinois has advanced strongly in 
recent years. The growth of all the state universities in 
the Middle-West in the last decade has surprised the 
country, and has been very significant of the purpose of 
the people concerning the higher learning; but the ad- 
vance in Illinois has been more decisive than in any other 
state. Yet we need not plume ourselves too much upon 
this. Illinois had given less support to her University 
than any other state in the Mississippi Valley up to ten 
years ago ; and Illinois has had more at stake and more to 
give than any other state. There has been room enough 



26 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 

for growth of her University, and a realization of her own 
indifference touched her pride. Much has been done ; the 
Legislature, from its point of view, has made liberal ap- 
propriations, and the Governor has given us warm words 
of encouragement which have quickened our heart-beats ; 
the officers, faculties, and students of the University have 
gone forward in harmony and without much commotion ; 
we have increased in numbers, enlarged our offerings, ad- 
vanced our standards, gone more and more into real Uni- 
versity work, until we have come sharply into rivalry or 
comparison with the other state universities, and in some 
measure with the oldest and strongest universities in the 
country. 

But what next? Are we to feel that we have gone 
about far enough? By no means. Is Illinois willing to 
hold a place second to that of any neighboring state in her 
provision for the higher training for her youth? Is she 
content to send her sons and daughters out of the State to 
get the best there is in American education? It is not to 
be thought of. The bright star which marks the center of 
population in America must with the next census be 
brought within the boundaries of Illinois. That which 
marks the center of agricultural productivity is already 
here. We are at the center of the carrying trade : the 
map of Illinois is blacker With railroad lines than that of 
any other state in the Union, or that of any other nation 
on the globe. Are we not to have the center of education 
here also? Shall we not force the best men and women in 
the east to come to the center of the country for training 
rather than permit the annual pilgrimages of eastern col- 
lege presidents for western students to continue indefi- 
nitely upon assumptions which rest upon temerity more 
than upon fact? Why shall Illinois not aspire to be the 
recognized center of American education? Illinois is 
able : her industrial and commercial primacy depends 
upon it : and the men and women of her future will bless 
us for it. 

Is our outlook a visionary one ? I answer with a quo- 



THE UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS 27 

tation from a recent letter to The Boston Transcript from 
Hon. S. N. D. North, a Boston statistician and economist 
of wide experience and keen insight, just appointed Di- 
rector of the United States Census by the President. The 
letter was written to protest against the treatment of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the State of 
Massachusetts. Mr. North speaking not to Illinois but to 
Massachusetts, says : 

" During a recent visit to the University of Illinois, I 
was profoundly impressed with the generosity with which 
the people of that State have equipped that great institu- 
tion of learning. In number of buildings, in size, in archi- 
tectural beauty, and in the most modern facilities for work, 
this plant is not inferior to that of any Eastern university. 
* * * * There have been single sessions of the legisla- 
ture which have voted to the University more money than 
Massachusetts has appropriated for all educational pur- 
poses combined in fifty years. These grants are not made 
recklessly ; they are carefully considered and deliberately 
ordered in the belief that no possible investment of the 
people's money will yield so quick and so satisfactory a re- 
turn. What is true of Illinois is true in no less degree of 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and other Western States. 
More and more the youth of these States are turning to 
their own institutions for education. Less and less, as the 
years pass, will these young men and women attend our 
Eastern colleges and technical schools ; and we must have a 
care lest the time shall come when Eastemboys will find it to 
their advantage to seek these Western Universities in order 
to enjoy the highest and most complete facilities in their 
lines of study, ." 

Let these great Central States press on in genuine and 
honest educational rivalry, with characteristic enthusiasm 
and with entire confidence. And let Illinois remember 
that if she is to maintain a University at all she is bound 
to maintain one which is not only in the first class, but 
that she is bound to help it to the very head of that class. 
And let her realize that when it comes to rivalry with the 



28 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 

very best, an advance calls for all the foresight and enthu- 
siasm and moneyed help the State can give. In universi- 
ties the best is not likely to be cheap, and what is cheap is 
not likely to be the best. Yet, we need not hesitate. 
There is no safer endowment than the buoyant enthusiasm, 
the democratic spirit, and the taxing power of a State with 
six millions of intelligent and prosperous people, and with 
potential resources wholly beyond calculation. And the 
farther we go in training men and women, in enlarging 
knowledge, and in developing resources, the more stable 
and fruitful will that endowment be. 



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